Many many many moons ago, as a kid in high school, I had the good fortune to live for just one year directly across the street from the Grand River in Grand Rapids, Michigan. I spent just about every afteroon of that summer fishing for carp.

I used worms for bait. I would put a very heavy sinker on the line so that the line could slide freely through the sinker. I would lob the whole thing into the river and let out lots of line. The heavy sinker would sink quite fast and stay fixed in place, and the bait would woft in the current. With a bit of patience I would get a hard strike on the bait. I would usually set the hook and then have fun hauling in the rig and fixh. They pulled VERY hard. Not really a fight, but more a nasty pull that sometimes pushed the 10 lb test line I used.

Given that it was illegal to return them to the water, I always gave them to my neighbor who used them as fertilizer. I was always told they were essentially inedible.